


true love never has to hide

by alanryves



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Multi, Pining, Post-The Raven King, Shenanigans, Spin the Bottle, The Raven King Spoilers, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 06:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6894031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanryves/pseuds/alanryves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s just, my lips, killed him. But he isn’t dead? But how do you tell someone you need to slow it down, if you have only ever kissed once in a sort-of relationship of months? But he died after that one kiss?”</p>
<p>Henry patted her arm and hummed in sympathy, trying to bury his smugness that the conversation was leading directly where he had hoped it would. </p>
<p>“Never fear, Bluegirl, Henry Cheng, certified Love Expert, is at your command, and has a plan perfectly suited for just this situation.”</p>
<p><strong>tl;dr</strong> Henry is a little over-invested in making sure Blue and Gansey's relationship post-resurrection is going well, and enlists Ronan and Adam in his schemes, and romcoms and spin the bottle and shenanigans ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	true love never has to hide

It turns out that killing a guy with your first kiss? Kind of puts a damper on your libido.

Or that’s what Henry had gathered from watching Blue and Gansey post-kiss, kill, and re-birth. Not that he was watching all that closely, or anything, but, well, it would be a lie to say he wasn’t invested. 

Henry invested in lots of things, though. His hair, cats of Instagram, 80s pop ballads, and, recently, the romantic life of his recently acquired best friends.

A lot of things about the situation may have seemed weird, which, really, was because an impossible amount of things about the situation really were weird. However, his peripheral attachments to the impossible had made him far more ready to accept the magic cave entrances, resurrections, dream girls with hoofs, and the sight of Ronan Lynch singing along to “Love on Top” that had all become prominent presences in his Henrietta life. 

“Not to, like, cross lines or whatever--,” to which Blue scoffed, because Henry had very quickly established his disregard for any lines whatsoever, and currently his legs were crossed over Blue’s own, “But how’s the lip-action, or any-body-part-action, post-Laz?”

Blue met him with a look of confusion, and Henry sighed, muttering softly, “Lynch would get it,” then sighed of a different sort, because Ronan Lynch was also apparently a prominent-enough presence in his life. So many impossible things.

“You know. Did the kiss of death kill those restrained teenage hormones?”

Blue immediately turned red, kicked Henry’s legs far more painfully than should be possible for her small frame--maybe he could hide her combat boots somewhere--opened her mouth, closed it, turned more red, and smacked Henry’s head.

“That great, huh.”

Blue didn’t answer him long enough, so he considered resting the topic, for now at least, until she spoke, her words measured, not looking at him. 

“It’s just, my lips, killed him. But he isn’t dead? But how do you tell someone you need to slow it down, if you have only ever kissed once in a sort-of relationship of months? But he died after that one kiss?”

Henry patted her arm and hummed in sympathy, trying to bury his smugness that the conversation was leading directly where he had hoped it would. 

“Never fear, Bluegirl, Henry Cheng, certified Love Expert, is at your command, and has a plan perfectly suited for just this situation.”

“A plan.”

“Your skepticism wounds me, Sarge, it _wounds_ me. Don't you dare listen to what that minx Mrs. Woo has to say about me, if there's one thing I excel at, it is the execution of the classic romcom seduction plan.”

\--

The plan may not have been working that successfully.

Working may even be a loose verb-tense for the situation--the plan may not have even started out all that successfully.

The plan may have been undermined immediately, with Blue admitting after a brief pause, after a loose grin lit across her face, silly even, that, come to think of it, she wasn’t sure she had seen all that many romcoms. Which was an absolutely horrific error on both her taste and her upbringing--no offense to her Goddess of a mother or the rest of her terrifying, psychic, family that could maybe do terrifying, psychic, things to him--and clearly needed to be immediately remedied with as many romcoms that included numbers in their titles and musical serenades as immediately as possible.

The immediacy of this step in the flawlessly conceived classic romcom seduction plan, however, was soon interrupted by a call from Gansey, upon which Henry made a ridiculous face at Blue that lay somewhere between a knowing eyebrow-quirk and very-joking, not-serious-at-all flirtatious smirk--or so he hoped. The phone call inevitably led to Gansey being invited over to Litchfield to join them in Blue’s education of the romcom genre, which was also to be Gansey’s education of the romcom genre.

Gansey arrived quick enough at Litchfield, and they heard the trembling noises of the engine before they saw him in the doorway to the sitting room-screening area (“A very reasonable room pairing, unlike some _other_ places I won’t name,” Blue had said once, gaze sharply pointing towards Gansey, without real malice behind it, who for his part had just shrugged in feigned innocence, a gesture which had seemed far lighter, and truer, than the gestures Henry had seen him use in school). The warning shook Henry out of himself for a brief second, and he realized that his current arrangement with Blue, folded together on the couch, Blue on her back taking up most of it, with Henry tucked on his side between Blue’s body and the back cushions, his ankle hooked with hers to keep her from falling off after she had laughed outrageously when he called himself a love expert--well, it may send rather an opposite message than the intended purpose of his recently proposed scheme. 

Henry was about to move, somehow, but Gansey didn’t seem fazed at all when he walked in, apart from the face he makes at Blue, in return to the face she makes at him when they make eye contact. 

“Sup?” Gansey directed over Blue toward Henry, or to them both.

“Henry has decided we need to be culturally educated,” Blue said, with as much irony as she could manage before letting a small laugh slip out near the end, and Henry tightened his ankle around her own instinctively to keep her from falling again. Really, her laughter was undermining the brilliance of this very brilliant plot. 

“Maybe a cultural education from someone other than Ronan who thinks animal Vines are the height of humanity could be for the best,” Gansey replied as he slipped off his boat shoes, which he insisted on wearing despite the chill-for-Henrietta winter. Blue noticed the action and wrinkled her nose. “Gross. Keep your feet away, and also you’re just jealous because he always shows me the cutest ones.”

Henry decided here was best to intervene, directing Gansey to set up the Netflix and projector before bringing his gross feet over toward them, which he did agreeably, before seating himself at the floor in front of the couch, head resting on the small piece of cushion near Blue’s hand. 

He counted it as a small victory when Blue--now turned on her own side to better watch the movie, and Henry kind of arranged over her, seated mostly upright now with his legs crossed over her own--raised her hand to Gansey’s neck, toying with the hair there, lightly. They were as touchy as they were before, before the kiss, before the death and life, which is to say cautiously so and still seeming to fear something. But then again he didn’t say it was a large victory.

He counted it as a small victory of another sort when Gansey decided to join them on the couch, toppling onto the other end and having to lean against Henry in order to fit upright with his legs curled over the arm. Blue may have shouted in protest, but her shouts were soon covered by Henry’s louder hushing to refocus their attentions on the movie.

“Why did you hush us if he’s holding up signs? They are not even speaking, at all,” Gansey said, the end of his comment muffled by Henry’s hand covering his mouth.

Blue began to speak her own unnecessary comment, but Henry threw his other hand towards her mouth, still not looking away from the screen.

“It’s about love!” he finally let himself shout out in exasperation, probably too loudly, once the scene had finished and he had loosed Gansey and Blue from his hands, an action he immediately began to regret.

“Ok, but why is he--” Blue began again, before Henry started to talk over her again. “It’s about love! And giving love without expectation, or, or attachments. But just, like, because love is best when it is given! He’s just telling her to tell her, to be honest. Because he loves _her_ , but not like the idea of being with her, or expects that. It’s just about love.” He finally finished, letting out a large breath and sinking back into the couch, his defense of _Love, Actually_ (2003, dir. Richard Curtis) far too well-honed at this point after needing to drag it back out every December 1st when he played it at midnight, on the dot, to the protests of his housemates. (“How dare you tell me how to assimilate to new cultures?” “It’s a _British film_!” “The fact that you know that though still proves its cultural relevancy.”)

“Ok, fine, but you said there were musical numbers, where is the musical number?” Blue said, poking him.

“Just wait, we’re getting to it, stop jumping the greatest scenes of this entire movie.” Gansey joined in, a light smirk on his face, “Yes, Blue, you can’t be taken anywhere.”

“You’re not any better, considering I just had to cover your mouth with my hand to stop you from interrupting one of the greatest scenes of one of the most classic films from the past two decades.” To this, Gansey’s smirk grew to a larger grin, seeking and failing to feign protest. 

The rest of the movie passed with similar bickering commentary obscuring most of the actual dialogue, but Henry managed to catch Blue singing along to “All I Want For Christmas” and post it to his Snap Story--which she would never be able to call him out on, because she stubbornly wasn’t letting him give her the smartphone he had picked out for her as a Christmas gift a month early--and he was pretty sure he saw Gansey tear up a bit at the end, then cough to cover it up, and he was even less sure, but for different reasons of hesitation, that he felt Gansey’s fingers brush against his wrist then as well, and he definitely, maybe felt a little light-headed regardless. And then they were out of the house, Blue sleepily committing to a next time with more movies with musical serenades and Gansey saluting as he helped Blue out the door, getting gently hit away for his efforts.

When they left, when Henry was having a noisy dinner with the rest of his roommates, Henry could still feel the lingering points of heat from where Gansey had leaned against him, where Blue’s feet had drawn along his ankles, where her arm had lightly shoved him. 

He really, really needed them to sort out their relationship, and fast, so whatever this weirdness was, it could be resolved as quickly as possible.

\--

“Okay, so I think your clear next move is a serenade, preferably an older number updated with some nice pop instrumentals.”

Henry spoke without prompt, or even clear conversational lead-in. This was likely the cause of both Ronan and Adam’s looks of absolute confusion, although the former’s was a more controlled confusion, so as to limit his appearance of any interest whatsoever in the matter (a limitation which then only built Henry’s resolve to get Ronan to come out for karaoke some night, a scheme slowly building in his mind and many talks with Blue, who only ever served to enable his schemes, and vice versa). Blue’s look was not so much confused as amused, or amused-covering-embarrassed.

“A serenade.” Blue stressed each syllable, putting down the pool cue? stick? thing, on the pool table and thus pausing the game of--terrible--pool that they were--terribly--losing to Ronan and Adam, pride at this point preventing them from accepting any of the proffered handicaps or partner switches that Ronan had more and more frequently suggested, with more and more ridicule--he had at one point suggested replacing Adam with Chainsaw, and Henry still couldn’t decide if Adam had looked more hurt at the suggestion he could be replaced with a bird, or Ronan at Adam’s offense at this suggestion in the first place.

“I’m sorry, but, what?” Adam asked, confusion only growing on his face, while amusement only grew on Ronan’s as he saw Blue’s growing embarrassment.

An embarrassment not aided whatsoever by Henry’s following statement. “We’re scheming to get Blue and Three to get it on.” _Isn’t there some better pun combination I can make of this? There must be_ , Henry thought, making a mental note, for himself and RoboBee, to work on it.

Adam nearly poked Ronan in the eye with his pool cue-stick-thing, but Ronan was spared as he nearly collapsed to the ground in a large, open laugh, alarming his bird that had been perched on the edge of the table.

Blue spluttered. “Firstly! It is not a _we_. It is a _Henry_. Secondly, I think joking about my deeply serious possible trauma regarding kissing caused by how the two people I’ve kissed have had more complicated than usual relationships with death is very disrespectful here.”

Adam’s soft reply, “Two?,” was hidden by Ronan’s continued laughter, which had become more and more akin to wheezing the longer it lasted. Henry was feeling better and better about Ronan’s ever-increasing presence in his life. 

“Yeah, so, serenade. What’s in your repertoire?”

“I would just like to say here that whatever accompaniment you would possibly need I would be more than happy to dream up, and that I cannot imagine a greater use for my dreaming thievery,” Ronan managed to say, between breaths and laughs, although he had finally stood back to his full height, having reached his hand up towards Adam, who wordlessly pulled him up, confusion hardly having lessened.

“Can we, maybe, backtrack here a bit? Why do we need to scheme to get Blue to kiss Gansey? Aren’t they, like, already, y’know,” Adam trailed off.

Henry chose to ignore most of Adam’s statement, focusing instead on the inclusive “we” Adam had used in the statement. “Great, so you’re all on board then, excellent! What older numbers that would sound great with Blue’s range and a pop-music arrangement can we all come up with?”

“Now this may be too on the nose, but why not just spin the bottle?” Ronan suggested, ignoring Henry’s question. Why were they all ignoring his questions regarding serenade schemes?

“Why not just--kiss him?” Adam suggested, quieter, his expression some mixture of exasperation and awe at this conversation even happening.

Henry replied, “Please, Lynch-Parrish, do not mix genres here or make absurd suggestions that derail my carefully laid plans.”

“Okay if I was ‘mixing genres,’ I’d ask for some exploding things,” Ronan said, looking towards Adam at the last part, who just shook his head before pronouncing, “No.”

Blue, who had been carefully studying the end of the pool cuestickthing, in a manner that really they should have been paying closer attention to, finally put it down on the table and said, “May I remind us all that often times, in recent history even, when members of this group have attempted to plot about other members of this group’s fates, they have often ended poorly and even in death?”

“Yeah, sorry, Sargent, but I had no part in that shit at all and this is hilarious,” Ronan said. Adam’s face looked conflicted, his initial guilt seceding to agreement and laughter, and he failed to conceal any of these emotions from Blue. 

“You’re supposed to be sensible, Adam! You’re supposed to have my back against the plots of the 1% against us! This is why the working classes can’t rise up, they’re too easily distracted by the shiny things they’re offered!” Blue’s righteous anger lost much of its terror when placed against the absurd scene of Ronan again beginning to laugh, and Adam beside him visibly struggling to repress his own laughter.

Henry, again ignoring most of what Blue had said, simply responded, “So you agree. You think this scheme is shiny.”

It’s a miracle Blue’s groan in anguish didn’t set the dust around the room into a storm.

\--

“RoboBee, find the grossest thing in this apartment,” Gansey said, then let out a hurt gasp when the robotic bee circled around him--Gansey had since grown more familiar with the bee, but Henry still instructed it to keep from landing on him. 

“He only does this because there are so many gross things in the apartment, so it makes sense to go straight to the source,” Henry said, causing Gansey to let out another hurt noise.

They had been at it maybe an hour now, lying on Gansey’s mattress in the living room side by side, after Henry had followed Gansey to Monmouth after school--Adam went to meet Ronan at the Barns, whose absences from school were not being discussed with Gansey present, per usual status quo, and Blue had to stay late at school to help set up some environmental thing, that they were all supportive of, but also sad about, because people having things in their lives that weren’t mostly about the five of them often made them sad, in that way that maybe wasn’t healthy but also couldn’t be replaced. Henry had been trying to show Gansey the secrets to how to get RoboBee to find you what you’re really after, which truthfully Gansey was actually a natural at understanding, a natural at saying words and having the thought meaning expressed and executed. However, Henry frequently intercepted Gansey’s commands with his own thoughts, confusing RoboBee and making him not listen to Gansey, which he would never reveal to him. 

“Can you get me a sandwich, RoboBee?”

“No, no, you have to ask him to _find_ you one. And it helps if you have one in mind, right, your perfect sandwich, the sandwich of your dreams, for a dream bee to find.”

“Okay,” Gansey said, “now you’re just making fun of me.”

“Maybe,” Henry conceded, “but I’m also sad that my robotic bee cannot get me the sandwich of my dreams, the perfect turkey and cheese on white bread, the crusts removed.”

“That’s just,” Gansey replied, “a regular sandwich. I could get you that right now.”

“Alright, a) I’m skeptical that you could actually get that for me right now, because I’m in general terrified at the food quality in an apartment of two teenage boys without a real kitchen and no real housekeeper, and b) that would not be the sandwich of my _dreams_ , but just a sandwich.”

Gansey said nothing immediately after this, but Henry understood that this silence was because Gansey understood, as he usually, always, did.

In the silence, Henry let himself have one small peek at Gansey, one of the many forbidden glances he allowed himself, like an addict with a limited amount of substance left, parceling out doses, or some less wholly self-destructive metaphor. He let himself look at Gansey, the wrinkle in his brow, the messiness of his hair, legs bent, one hand stretched out on the mattress, the other near his lips, his thumb ghosting the bottom. He let himself look at his lips.

He let himself look, in this one small moment, and he let himself be in love with Gansey, in this one small moment, and then he looked away, and he told himself that it was fine that he was in love with Gansey, because everyone was in love with Gansey, and he was fine laying on this mattress with him, fine sharing RoboBee with him. He was fine.

“So, you and the Bluebird. How’s it been going there?” Henry was not fine at all, clearly.

Gansey looked over to him, a look that Henry hoped didn’t expose any of his earlier thoughts. “What does that question mean?”

“You know,” Henry continued, turning his head away again, turning away from Gansey’s eyes on him, hoping Gansey turned his eyes away in turn. “You kissed, you died, you came back to life, but how have the kisses been since then? Closer to other forms of deaths?”

Gansey spluttered, his mind evidently not as close to kissing as a topic as Henry’s evidently was. (He really, really needed Gansey and Blue to get kissing again, so he could stop thinking less about kissing altogether, maybe, hopefully.) 

“Uh, well, we’ve, y’know, kind of kissed since,” he replied, in measured breaths.

Henry tried to not to laugh a little, out of more nerves than anything. “I don’t think kissing is the sort of thing you can ‘kind of’ do.” Henry was really, really, not at all fine, lying on a mattress in the late afternoon--or early evening, by this point--light, sun hitting in through the Monmouth windows just right, framing Richard Gansey III in warmth, Richard Gansey III, whose mattress he was lying on, talking about kissing, with a robotic bee still silently buzzing about, because he hadn’t been able to issue any greater commands to it.

Gansey, for his part, just groaned dramatically and threw his other arm onto the mattress, a gesture both incredibly un-Gansey-like and _incredibly_ Gansey-like.

The conversation paused, and Henry hoped maybe they could just move on, maybe actually find some method to acquire sandwiches, even non-dream sandwiches, because it was getting around dinner-time, when Gansey spoke.

“I usually can talk about this stuff with Parrish,” which struck Henry as possibly the most unimaginable thing he had ever tried to picture, laughing a little in his mind at the thought of what a disaster feelings talk with Adam and Gansey would be, and then actively having to force himself not to laugh and to continue listening after imagining the alternative--feelings talks with Ronan and Gansey. “But, well. And we’re in rather a unique situation here. There aren’t exactly self-help books, or magical prophecies, or WikiHow pages with instructions.”

Henry doesn’t wait before speaking again, doesn’t want any pauses to betray him at all in this increasingly potentially dangerous conversation (which was ridiculous, he tried to remind himself, he had become apparently in recent days the person to have kissing conversations with, this was no dangerous than others). “IDK, man, in my experience, kissing is pretty great and pretty easy, eventually, from just, like, going with it. Although, I guess my experience also does not involve kissing of true loves.”

“You’ve never,” Gansey said, voice slightly quieter, more hesitant, “been in love?”

Henry laughed, first an outburst that possibly betrayed more self-deprecation, before transforming it into something lighter. “Well, I have always felt that I just had too much love to give, and how could I overwhelm some person with all of that love?”

Gansey hummed in response, which really conveyed absolutely no reaction whatsoever.

“Dream sandwiches though, you never answered, what was yours, and can we acquire two right now, because if we order now we can get them by six.”

Classic, Henry, classic.

\--

It was Ronan who ended up finishing the bottle of whiskey off first, before placing it in the center of the circle.

It was a night of successes and losses for Henry, still too early, however, to say which of the two would take it all. A success: he had introduced the idea of the holiday celebration sleepover at Monmouth to the group, and, after much hassling of Blue, via one wickedly lovely, and wicked, Maura Sargent, and after lighter hassling of Adam, via Mr. Lynch, they had all assembled together. (The former was one of the truest victories; Blue had put up a surprising amount of protest at the idea--which was really not surprising at all, considering Henry’s loss of the night--with surprisingly well thought out arguments against it, presented carefully to Maura when they all showed up in Lynch’s car to grab her and whatever “niceties”--Gansey, of course--she may need, which also inspired another round of protest. The arguments: a) Is it a sleepover at all, when two already live together? And two of them have been sharing more than a few nights together lately, which was very not subtle considering Opal crashed on Blue’s bed those nights--Adam blushed, Ronan rolled his eyes with fondness--and, more importantly, b) In agreeing, in _supporting_ this she is also _supporting_ her only daughter spending the night with her boyfriend, without even something like a curse to prevent her from kissing, or any other number of acts.

“Adam and Ronan will be there, right?” Maura had said, gesturing over at them near some bookshelf, where they had been poking around at some undoubtedly weird item on the shelf, before they immediately changed postures at their inclusion.

“Are you,” Ronan objected, “counting me as a good influence?” His objection, however, carried less weight with a toy troll doll with wisps of purple hair in hand. 

Maura didn’t bother replying, and Calla had snorted from the reading room, which was reply enough for all, and Henry had been pleased to have not been counted as a good influence himself, for possibly one of the few times in his life--another success.)

A second--or third--success, that was, however, also part loss: Henry had managed to steal (okay, ask Mrs. Woo for, he really hadn’t had to be as sneaky as he had let Ronan believe, who had himself been in charge of the tequila and peppermint schnapps--the latter at Ronan’s own persistence, because, as he had grumbled, or maybe just spoke naturally, “It’s Christmas.”) two six packs of beer and ciders plus a bottle of whiskey for the evening. 

A loss: Ronan’s suggestion of spin the bottle had, admittedly, been great--although Henry will always still vouch for the unparalleled seduction of the serenade. (At some point, in some place in the country, off some highway, in some roadstop bar, Blue and Gansey prove him wrong, or right, depending on who you ask.) The second success was then part loss in its provision of a bottle.

Before the bottle had been finished off, Henry had gotten up, in search of a soda. The process of standing confirmed his decision, as he walked towards the bathroom-kitchen-laundry with defeat at that room’s multiple purposes and with the loud, clambering footsteps of the intoxicated who are only aware upon standing of how intoxicated they have become. 

At Henry’s request for soda, however, Ronan had sat up straighter and pointed at him, an imitation of a Gansey gesture, saying, too loudly, “Mixers!!”

Blue had scoffed and replied, “What, not strong enough for straight alcohol?” The remark undercut by the cider in her own hands, which she had defended to her not-very-critical audience earlier, with Henry especially, a faithful lover of grenadine and wine coolers, having no room to comment. “Then who’s going to do shots with me?”

Gansey groaned, saying, “Please do not under any circumstances say the ‘s’ word. Also, not to overstep, but you are quite small and likely don’t need much yourself.”

Blue interpreted the remark with its intended consideration, and only replied with a smile, “This may be like only the third time I’ve been drunk in my life, and the other two times may have been from ‘accidentally’ having some of Calla’s drinks, but I have a pretty good feeling that I have a much higher tolerance than you.”

Nobody tried to defend or argue against this point, as Henry returned, can of Sprite in hand (one of the three soda cans and bottle of Sriracha that made up the entirety of the Monmouth refrigerator's contents), because Gansey’s face was already looking pretty flushed after a beer and a half.

“Sargent, it would be my absolute honor to do a tequila shot with you, or twelve,” Ronan simply replied, with a solemn look of pride on his face.

Henry took his seat between Blue and Adam, and then Ronan winked at him, and then Ronan downed the final bits of the fifth, and then he placed it in the center. It was unclear at the moment if shots would not, in fact, have been a worse choice.

They had jokingly suggested spin the bottle before, and Gansey continued this debate upon presentation of the empty bottle.

“Is that what teenagers do?” Gansey asked, head tilted to Blue.

“You mean, when they’re not dedicating their lives to researching old stuff and tracking down dream things?” She replied, knocking her shoulder against Henry’s now that he was sitting next to her again. He was careful to make sure the can, now open, didn’t spill.

“Yes, exactly. You were a teen, Blue,” Gansey paused at Blue’s wary look and Adam’s similar expression, which made it clear he was getting ready to head Gansey off, but Gansey shook them both off and continued. “You know, before. What did you do then?”

“Oh, you know, it wasn’t all that exciting. I mostly was left alone in my guarded tower of seclusion, safekept from the world to protect my future true love,” Blue said.

Gansey replied, his fingers softly brushing against the back of her hand, another quick, cautious, but still personal gesture, “Well, it sure is a shame you had to meet him.”

“Gross,” Ronan, Adam, and Henry answered together, Ronan reaching to the bottle in the center and gave it a spin, with a wink as he did, which was frankly terrifying.

Their protests continued, but eventually dissolved; it was the start of winter break, not that that meant much to Ronan these days, but he was also in a good mood, because Adam had two weeks of not worrying about school and Ronan had been working on him to take at least a couple days off from work, and his good mood extended to the whole apartment, Henry and Blue having come over earlier to hang up Christmas lights, and the whole room was then filtered through the soft blue and white lights and their reflections off the Monmouth windows, and they had all made it here and found each other, and weren’t all totally okay, but would maybe be okay together, and they all laughed together as the bottle landed on Blue.

“Ok, before I consent, I’d like to say, the gender difference here has never been more obvious. Henry, why couldn’t you have been a girl?” She nudged him again, and he dramatized his own guilt and sorrow at his betrayal of her.

Ronan, for his part, leaned over and gave Blue a short kiss on the top of her head. It was funny how you could forget in how natural a gesture it seemed that his mouth so frequently--although, less frequently, it seemed, recently--could bite sharper than most knives--although, Henry also rarely kept his knives all that sharp. At least, until Ronan scrunched his nose, and Chainsaw tried to intercept them, Blue giggling softly at the bird’s concern and stroking her gently, the way Henry had seen Ronan do, and been constantly amazed by, until the amazement faded to an accustomed level of absurdity. Blue let Ronan take Chainsaw away when he went to sit down again across the circle they had formed. 

Next, Blue’s spin, as the recipient (Gansey: “Is that how the rules go?” Ronan: “Ask your romcom buddy, not me, man.” Henry: “This does betray a great gap in our teen sub-genre.” Adam, quieter, but seeming to settle the matter: “When have we really had, like, rules?” Blue, actually settling the matter, held the bottle as though she may decide to lash out at any of them if they persisted on this. Blue determined could be a frightening thing, even if that determination was to get on with this _genius_ -but-less-genius-because-of-Lynch’s-intervention, scheme.)

Blue set the bottle down with as little ceremony as possible, and gave it a small spin after warning them all first, “Don’t be gross.” In the end, the bottle pointed to Adam, across from her, and Henry tried to search out Ronan’s face to see if maybe after all he recognized any flaws in his plan--for if there were flaws, it was Ronan’s fault, really, he was no love expert, promised to help those friends in need.

Ronan did not seem to show sign of any flaw, however, but appeared more lightly amused than anything as Blue stood to her full height, which Henry was banned at this point from joking about, and bowed deeply towards Adam. 

“May I have the favor of your hand, Mr. Parrish?” Blue asked Adam, sounding--British? Accents were hard. But Adam did not appear to mind the accent, proffering his hand gracefully to Blue, who lightly brushed her lips against the back of his hand, before again bowing. 

Gansey, laughing into his beer, reflected Ronan’s amusement, but more openly, the way the two of them tended to do, reflecting, intensifying each other’s emotional states, that is, even if they were never identically expressed, and rarely were. Unfortunately for Gansey, Ronan’s amusement was not solely directed at the performance in front of them, which became evident when Adam--how did Henry so often forget what a schemer Parrish could be, behind the practicalities and pragmatism, the ordered times and constant search for livable discomfort, if not satisfaction--performed, well, some maneuver that ended up with Gansey touching the bottle before Adam, Ronan’s accomplice, and by extension, Henry’s own, if they succeeded, nudged it at Blue.

It was possible the soda was not really yet doing much for Henry. It was possible to be jealous of a hand, even if Ronan was not.

It was not possible to be distracted by this, however, so Henry looked towards the bottle, looked at Ronan’s set expression, the focus of most gazes, looked at Blue, another possible focus of gaze.

“Alright, you crazy kids,” Ronan said, deadpan. “Get to it.”

“I think I missed when you called me Dad,” Gansey said quieter.

“Not sure now’s really the time for that exploration,” Adam said, a recent expert in explorations. “And no worries, we’re pretty good at resurrections by this point,” he added, nudging Gansey’s foot with his own, a variation of their practiced, casual fist bumps.

Henry, gaze on Blue, caught her tense in fear next to him, a small, sensible tensing, nothing as performative as her kiss for Adam. That was the division before fantasy and reality, which none of them really lived according to, not by most standards, but Henry could still sense the real, the gravity, of this game-kiss, and he took Blue’s hand in his own, pressed to the floor next to him, and gently squeezed it.

He tried to send her, in that hand, the words he had told Gansey once: _afraid and happy_. It was still a kiss after all, and Gansey sure had some, well, not-too-bad lips, likely. To die for, in fact. He was not sure it worked, and there was no reason for it, as Gansey leaned over, kissing her gently, and her kissing back, and there it was.

Gansey accepted Ronan’s cheers with appropriate irony, and Blue rolled her eyes, but squeezed Henry’s hand back.

\--

In the end, Blue may have been more of a lightweight than she supposed, and fell asleep first curled up in a corner on Gansey’s mattress.

“The walls are thin,” Gansey reminded Ronan and Adam as they made their retreat to Ronan’s room--Ronan pulling Adam up, the far more sober of the two, and of them all, but also the far more tired. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Henry added, smiling to himself at the growing, but still small, distress on Gansey’s face.

Adam mumbled as Ronan led him over to the room, “I don’t even know what that would be, man.” Ronan only gave another wink in Henry’s direction, face set in its blank state of aggression, or maybe aggressively blank? 

For their part, Gansey and Henry remained sitting on the floor, leaning against the mattress, now alone, with the sleeping Blue, after Ronan’s door closed, quieter than Henry would expect Ronan to close doors. 

Henry was beginning to wonder if he should remove himself to Noah’s old room, still preserved, considering there was a bed there now doubly un-slept in. He should probably give Gansey and Blue space. He did not do that.

“That is two times more than I would ever like to see that expression on Ronan’s face,” Henry said, nothing at all like an inquiry whether he should sleep in Noah’s bed.

“I have never seen him make that face in my life, and I’m honestly terrified.” Gansey did not suggest Henry to go to bed in another bed either.

“Please,” Henry said, giving Gansey a dramatic pleading look, “Make him stop.”

Gansey laughed softly. “I almost miss the Ronan who crashed the pig.”

Henry laughed as well, and their laughter grew louder until a shout came from Ronan’s room. “THIN WALLS FUCKERS.”

Their laughter only increased at that, which was likely to do nothing to quell Ronan’s bitterness, but neither of them had forced him to wink, if honestly that was what the expression could even be called.

“The funniest thing,” Gansey continued, between breaths of laughter, “is how he can’t--really-- _do_ it? His other eye squints too?” Gansey imitated the expression, which only sent Henry into further laughter.

Henry slid further down on the ground, lying now with his head propped on the mattress, and winked at Gansey as exaggeratedly as possible, then again with his other eye.

Gansey only shook his head, then reached behind him, grabbing two blankets from the mattress and tossing one to Henry and keeping one for himself, before slumping into a similar pose. Henry accepted the blanket, a warm fleece, and wrapped it around himself, not realizing how chilly he had gotten now that the alcohol was wearing off, and other sources of warmth too. Well, those sources weren’t really absent, but they were not relevant, he told himself.

Henry found himself remembering one of the first times he had been at Monmouth with Gansey and Blue, when it had been strange for him to be in this space still, this so-established space, even though with the two of them it had never been strange at all; the opposite really, the only strangeness just how easily established, how _easy_ they felt and fit. 

Henry had walked to the room Gansey had pointed out to get some water, warning that there may not be very clean cups, if any. Henry had walked in and stopped immediately, as he exclaimed, “Why on God’s earth is there a fridge in your bathroom?”

Gansey had jumped to the defense of the kitchen-bathroom-laundry, but Gansey was very misguided, and Blue looked at Henry with the most open face of gratitude and talked over Gansey. “Where have you been all my life?”

Henry, having gotten the water, in a cup that was not that clean, from water that came from a bathroom sink, that was also, evidently, the kitchen sink, walked back to them at the table, shoving Blue’s leg on the chair she had stolen when he had gotten up to make room for himself to share the seat.

“I should have always tried to flatter you more openly at Nino’s, instead of just leaving overly large tips in hopes that they would adequately woo you, Blue.”

Blue shoved Henry over more and stole some of his water, and then he saw the menacing light gleam in her eyes before she animatedly began, “Speaking of--” Gansey cut her off with a sigh, and a _Jane_ , but he was smart enough to know defeat by this point, and steamed silently, mostly, while Blue and Henry laughed over their disastrous first encounter.

Henry had found himself still shocked at the openness of his own confession, a meagre one all things considered, but a confession nevertheless, but was also shocked at Blue and Gansey’s ability to roll with it, and maybe most shocked of all at how shocking it never really was--Blue and Gansey and Henry. He had acted for so long, acting in this entire life for his mother to make her business deals, but the acting had become real, and here he was, finding himself again and again, finding himself more attached, and choosing these attachments, choosing this world he had made, and that had made him. Not of convenience, but something more, or surely something, and something he couldn’t, in so many senses of that word, give up on.

In Monmouth now, they lay together under their separate blankets, in the silence that could be best described as serene. It wasn’t late enough for the sun to be coming up, but the Christmas lights were still plugged in around the room, and Gansey had shut off the main lights during the party, for the aesthetic. He might not have actually phrased it that way, but, also, he may as well have. 

Henry’s gaze drifted over to the model Henrietta, tracing the various routes of his routines, before he spoke quietly, lightly. “So what do you think you’ll find next?”

Gansey didn’t answer immediately. He was wearing his wireframes now, and he looked younger, or maybe softer, or something, with some of his blanket tucked beneath his head.

“I’m not quite sure that’s how it works.” His voice matched Henry’s tone, quiet, light. “You don’t necessarily get to choose quests, do you?”

“Sure you do,” Henry affirmed. “Maybe the next one can be, like, finding proof of other life.”

Gansey let out a small laugh. “Like, aliens?”

“Yes, exactly like aliens!” Henry began laughing too, but attempted to maintain a serious tone, to reflect the absolute seriousness of his suggestion. 

“Do you think anyone’s had a magical quest to find extraterrestrials?” 

Henry, slipping deeper into that euphoric strange state somewhere between too-tired and too-awake, replied, “So we’ll be the first! There can certainly be no worthier quest.”

Gansey only laughed quietly again, before he said, “Well, we’ll have to get Blue on board. But she loves stars, so I’m sure she’ll be into it.” Gansey started laughing louder then, and Henry gave him a funny look as he held up a finger, then said between laughs, “I just imagined Blue interacting with aliens.”

Henry laughed too at the image, and then they tried to hush themselves while considering it further. “It would either be a complete disaster or, like, universe-changing. Really, universe-changing is a given, just either for better or worse. Discussing gender relations and identity categories and plant life and comparing music, then accidentally beginning the first interplanetary war.”

“Adam could negotiate the peace though,” Gansey replied. Henry nodded.

“You don’t think Ronan could,” Henry began, and paused, reflecting. “Ronan really _could_ dream up a spaceship, couldn’t he?” Gansey seemed to have followed his train of thought, and reached the same conclusion, judging by the look of equal parts puzzlement, awe, and delight on his face that surely matched Henry’s own.

“The real problem would be security,” Gansey said instead of an answer. “Goat girls are one thing, but the government might care a bit about unauthorized spacecraft launching from a field in Virginia.” He smiled again. “Lucky for us we’ll have a connection in Congress.”

“So it’ll be the long game then, Richardman?” Henry asked. 

“Absolutely,” Gansey answered immediately. He hesitated, thinking, before speaking again. “Adam might be hard to convince. Do you think he could give up on becoming a judge or brain surgeon or diplomat and go for aerospace instead?”

“But,” Henry looked back over at him, expression open. “It’s space, man.”

Gansey looked back, a large, loosening grin on his face. “ _Yeah_.”

They both laughed again, soft, open. Henry stretched out, turning onto his back again, as Gansey curled up more into his own blanket. Outside was still total darkness, the lights reflected in the windows all that was really visible yet in them, but Henry figured it must be pretty late, the late where it’s nearly early. They lay there awhile, and the laughter turned to quiet breathing.

Henry spoke, again, quietly--why did he keep doing that, keep talking, filter absent, like it had never existed. “Did you know your accent gets much thicker when you’re drunk? Like, almost a parody, like an SNL sketch version of Gansey the Third.” He looked over to his side and then realized Gansey had fallen asleep, still with just his head on the mattress, body on the floor, a position that would be greatly regretted come morning. Blue had moved in her sleep to now take up most of the mattress, instead of just the small corner. 

Henry knew there was a bed, a whole entire other bed, in a whole entire other room, but it was late or early enough that he pushed that thought away, only curling up more in his own blanket. 

Henry woke from the sound of Ronan swearing loudly, and Chainsaw pecking loudly at something in response, or maybe Ronan’s swearing was caused by Chainsaw, or maybe they were both being their usual nuisance selves at far too early in the morning, which was probably actually, like, eleven.

Henry hesitated to open his eyes, not sure yet if he was hungover, still tired, or both. When he finally did he saw Gansey, still next to him, slowly and unenthusiastically also waking up. They hadn’t moved too much during the night-morning; Gansey must have smartly given up any piece of the mattress and spared his neck the stretch, instead curling more of the blanket under his head and using it as a pillow at some point in the night. Henry’s own neck was not so lucky, and as he sat up he tried, and failed, to crack it.

Gansey looked around in confusion for a moment, until realizing his glasses were still on his face--which Henry assumed could not have been comfortable or very good for the very fragile-seeming frames--then spoke, the confusion not out of his voice, however. “I slept.” 

Henry, in the process of trying to massage some of the kinks from his neck, looked down at Gansey, still lying on the floor beside him. “Yeah, G, you did.”

Gansey’s expression only grew more confused, but seemed to have lost some of its sleepiness, his brow furrowing slightly. “Huh.”

Another loud noise then came from the kitchen-bathroom-laundry, and it seemed Blue, who had apparently already gotten up, was evidently involved in Ronan and Chainsaw’s noisiness, which seemed to be about some dubious breakfast decisions. Gansey let out a large exhale before tossing his blanket on the mattress and pushing himself off the floor to peacekeep between the terrible forces that were Blue and Ronan at this terribly early hour, even if he still didn’t know the actual time--he should probably try to find his phone around the apartment somewhere.

Henry let out his own sigh, however, as he pushed himself up and followed Gansey to the other room, joining Adam as spectator and bystander in the mess of Monmouth, where they were both happy to only be visitor for once, as the noise continued, possibly about eggs, or some other disaster, and a bag of cereal lay torn open on the kitchen-bathroom-laundry floor with what looked like Lucky Charms spilling out, and Henry chose to label any emotions he was feeling as tired, and hungry, as Gansey attempted to wrangle out the noise-making parties to compromise and go out for breakfast-lunch.

\--

He could not, he learned, only label his emotions as tired or hungry forever, but that did not mean he did not damn well try. 

His plan, with Ronan and Adam’s assists, had succeeded, and the kiss had happened, and more kisses to follow, likely, and Henry was happy his friends were happy, and not really examining other feelings resting there.

It was shockingly easy, however, not to examine these feelings, considering how little changed, how the habits he and Gansey and Blue had fallen into together continued, still seeing each other nearly every day. Blue, finally accepting the gifted phone, snapped him all day from school and had proven herself to be a filter aficionado, not that there really had been a doubt there. Gansey was hopeless as ever, blaming Cabeswater and magic time stuff for his failures at understanding youth culture, but Henry also saw him struggling once at trying to get the face filters to load on his own phone--Blue had had to download the app onto his device for him in the first place. Henry had tucked that embarrassment away for future purposes, however, rather than exposing it immediately. 

Beyond technology, or, still part of technology, but in a different way, their movie nights had continued--Henry was currently dicking around playing some shooting game Cheng2 likes, although at present he was more just dicking around watching as Cheng2 killed things in the shooting game he likes while waiting for Blue to get off work and come over so they could tag team in dragging Gansey out of whatever nest of books he had built for himself and watch their next masterpiece, _The Princess Bride_ \--he had had to work up to it, after all. It was no surprise really that Gansey’s years of research and explorations of myth and history would continue even after the one quest was over, and right now they were all living in the shadowy space before they themselves were being volunteered into researching and exploring along with him, and were mostly switching off who had to hear him talk on and on about Eastern European folklore, or tales of strange disappearances, or how different food items were made. Henry, for his part, mostly just dropped off various space books onto Gansey’s book pile, because he was still actually very serious about their future interstellar explorations.

Henry felt the January air blowing into Litchfield before he saw or heard Blue enter, but she quickly made her presence known by unceremoniously dropping a heavy stack of papers into his lap.

“No, Blue,” Henry stated, as she finally walked into his view. “Gansey is the one with the papers and books. We are the ones with the televisions that act as an escape from the papers and books. I know it’s easy to get confused--” He was interrupted by Blue hitting him on top of the head with one of them, laughing as he dodged her second attack. “Watch the hair!”

Blue rolled her eyes, but her expression held no malice, or any annoyance; in fact, she appeared the opposite, happier than he could imagine possible after coming from a shift at a pizzeria filled with prep school boys.

She raised the paper she had in her hand to his eyes, instead of hitting him again--too close to his eyes at first, so he tilted his head back until he could read.

“They’re road maps!” Blue exclaimed. “They were just on the curb, the whole pile of them, on my way here, outside the Dollar Store!”

Henry did not understand the reason for the excitement, but Blue’s moods, as ever, were infectious. His confusion must have still been evident to Blue, as she continued her incoherent explanations, now with a small undercurrent of annoyance that Henry did not immediately comprehend the significance of a pile of tossed out old road maps on a curb outside the Dollar Store.

“So, something with…roads? Is this an art thing?” 

Blue gestured again with the map, then spoke when that gesture did not reveal anything. “No, it’s, like, fate!”

“Fate,” Henry repeated.

“Yes!” Blue exclaimed again, the constant of this constantly incomprehensible conversation. “I texted Gansey already and told him we’d meet him at Monmouth, so you need to drive us there. Also I told him I’d bring pizza, so we need to go back and pick one up, except I can’t go in because I just left, so you have to go in, and I have the road maps. Is it cool if I leave my bike here?”

And thus Henry found himself swept out of the house, old road maps in hand, video game controller and movie plans abandoned. 

“Say hi to your boyfriend,” Cheng2 called out as Blue dragged Henry from the room, shooting game still shooting.

“Sure thing,” Henry and Blue answered together.

\--

As it happened, starting to date two people was less complicated than Henry would have initially imagined.

The consensus was that the road maps were indeed fate. 

When Henry and Blue arrived at Monmouth, pizza in hand, Blue had similarly thrown the heap of road maps into Gansey’s lap, who reacted similarly to Henry at the heap of road maps in his lap. 

After that, things became more difficult to order. Except, they weren’t more difficult events--the opposite, so impossibly possible and uncomplicated, the way that he really should have figured them to be at all, after everything else. Gansey came back to life twice. So, really, was kissing two people any stranger?

They weren’t difficult events; they were simple. They were on Gansey’s mattress, road maps spread out on the floor in front of them, pizza long since finished off and the boxes abandoned on the table across the room. Gansey was tracing some route, magical or real, if there could be said to be any difference between the two at this point. Henry followed the route, then redirected his finger to a new city, and Blue laughed and joined in. They were tangled together then, and there was a pause, laughter still lightening their chests, and then there was something else there too. 

They kissed.

The chronology may be muddled--Blue found herself with her hand in Henry’s hair and she smoothed it over, and Henry found himself caught by Gansey, whose own hands were nearer to his waist, and Gansey found himself kissing Henry. In this chronology of events, when the first kiss broke, less soft than Henry would have thought kissing Gansey to be--and he could admit now that he had, in fact, thought about it--Gansey reached over Henry to kiss Blue, too, in a similar kiss--and Henry could additionally admit that he had, in fact, thought about those kisses too. In this chronology, Blue shook her head at them both, but kissed Henry for her part as well, and this kiss was softer than Gansey’s, and softer than he would have thought. 

“Kissing with pizza breath is like kissing at work,” Blue muttered, breaking off the kiss but not moving, her head not far from Henry’s. 

They laughed, and then they kissed more. At least they did until they were interrupted by the customary loud noises that accompanied Ronan--with Opal and Chainsaw in tow--entering Monmouth. 

They didn’t do much to break away from each other, still all tangled together. Ronan only rolled his eyes before gesturing at Opal. “Whatever, folks, but remember: No kissing in front of the children.”

Blue did a far too scary imitation of Ronan’s eye-roll. “Lynch, you can’t be one to judge, you just came from kissing Adam in a church.”

“It’s _above_ a church.”

“Well, far be it for me to tell God that something is above him.” Their bickering could have continued for ages, or until Chainsaw did something they both found bizarrely cute, but they were in turn interrupted when feathers suddenly burst into the room, fluttering softly down onto them all. Opal had evidently chewed too much on a pillow.

A feather landed in Gansey’s hair, and Henry plucked it out gently, after first using it to further mess up his hair. He handed it then to Blue, who looked confused at the offering but still accepted it, then he began giggling softly, which only increased the look of confusion.

“Remember when Cheng2 said Gansey was our boyfriend, and now he’s right,” Henry said through his giggling to Blue. Gansey and Blue did not join in on the giggling, but Gansey’s blush at the word boyfriend and Blue’s eyeroll at her boys both mirrored his own light state, and the room and the world seemed impossibly light, feathers still falling down, as Ronan tried to pawn his phone onto Opal to chew instead. 

\--

“So we’re fucked,” Blue said. 

Gansey gave her a look from the driver’s seat, before turning back to the road. “Okay, I don’t think it was that bad.”

Blue sat up from the backseat, poking her pokey head between the front seats. “No, Gansey, this isn’t a cultural sensitivity thing. We could, like, probably die here.”

Henry leaned back in his seat before agreeing. “Yes, I second the fucked. Sorry, Ganseyman, but you did not walk into that lobby with me and Blue, it made the hotel from _The Shining_ look like a kid’s restaurant. And, like, not a creepy kind of kid’s restaurant either.”

Gansey hesitated as he signaled to switch lanes. “Well, I will admit that the six people just standing outside, silently staring as we pulled into the lot near our room was mildly alarming.”

“Thank you for admitting that we are fucked,” Blue said, propping her head up with her elbows on the middle console, and Henry could tell Gansey would be annoyed at this gesture if his mind wasn’t still circling around the looming approach of their murder-motel.

The murder-motel was not the only unsettling aspect of the evening, however. Medium-town Maine, which was like small-town everywhere-else, was proving itself to be a strange place that their months of road-trip planning had not quite readied themselves for, even after coming from their own strange small town. And one of them was a tree. Or, part-tree. After leaving their bags in the murder-motel room, itself no different from most other motel rooms they had encountered on the northern phase of their road trip, they had gone into the medium-sized Maine town and found their only remaining dinner prospect one lone restaurant on the town’s lone strip of businesses, because apparently there wasn’t much else happening past 9pm on a Thursday in medium Maine. The meal itself had been fine, as they sat alone in a two-story restaurant, loudly sharing a plate of cheese fries, surrounded by a surreal mix of nautical and Southwestern-style decor. 

They were possibly going to die on this late-planned venture to Maine, after spotting a note in a brochure--“The Nation’s First Sunrise”--and Blue’s persistence, enabled by Henry, that they absolutely had to go there. 

In the car, driving back to the murder-motel, where hopefully the six people who had just been standing in the low-light of the motel’s exterior, staring, motionless, as they drove in, had now left, Henry saw more uneasiness growing in Gansey’s expression as he spoke again. “You should maybe tell Ronan and Adam that we’re fucked then.”

Blue responded first. “On it,” then she shook her phone vaguely in the direction of the front seat. 

Gansey huffed. “I’m _driving_.”

Henry took the phone and looked at the display of messages between Blue and Ronan. “What are _those_?”

“Emojis,” Blue answered, undismayed. “Oh, and a pic of a cow.”

“Did you tell Ronan we were going to die via emoji?” Gansey asked, glancing in awe at the phone before looking back at the road ahead, which remained as empty as most things had been most of the night.

“Yeah, I sent skulls, then coffins--three of each, three of us. And then that one that’s the combo of an exclamation point and a question mark.”

“An interrobang?” Gansey responded automatically, then looked frustrated at himself for answering.

“Which cow is it?” Henry asked, and Blue took her phone back to scroll through the camera roll until she found the dozens of photos they had taken in a field in Pennsylvania, the location conveniently saved on the photograph names.

Gansey, however, was not as easily distracted by cow pictures, a clear character fault but one that Henry and Blue still overlooked. “Henry,” he started, “can you--”

Henry interrupted. “I already texted them, like, our actual location, and I received no animal pictures in response for my struggles.”

“That’s what you get for not holding all baby animals that Ronan shoves at you,” Blue reprimanded.

Gansey did not seem much calmer at any of this information, but only gripped the steering wheel harder. Henry, noticing this, did not attempt to help his mood, and instead asked the phrase that had at one point been banned according to the official road trip rules. “Are we there yet?”

Gansey did not answer, but fiddled with the radio a bit when static began coming through the song, which had been playing quietly enough that it hadn’t been recognizable anyways. Blue had curled back up on the back seat, disregarding most functions of seat belts, but then popped back up and turned off the radio altogether.

“Stop,” she spoke, probably too loudly. “There’s a Redbox!”

Henry immediately agreed with this absolutely necessary stop on their way back to the murder-motel. “This way, at least if we die, we can die with the comfort of baby-faced Heath Ledger.”

Gansey paused to consider, but eventually nodded in assent. “Amen to that.”

They were at this point accustomed to the sparsity of medium-town Maine, so the abandoned lot did not put too much fear in their hearts, although Henry may have also hurried in his selection of their film.

The murder-motel did not seem as obviously murder-y upon their return, the strangers all having dispersed, and they did not have to interact with any people in any front lobbies. Their belongings all ditched on the bed near the door, they curled up in front of Gansey’s laptop on the bed nearest the window, turned the wrong way on the bed, a poor choice, perhaps, but led to their legs crossing over each other, Gansey and Henry more contorted than Blue. Gansey had seen this movie before, and Blue had vague memories of being forced to watch it by Calla and Persephone in her youth, so they were maybe less attentive than in other movies, although even then their attention was a battle determinedly fought by Henry. He let it slide though, mostly a result of his sleepiness after the long day of front-seat navigation and song selection control. 

“Someone has to remember to set an alarm for the nation’s first sunrise.”

Gansey and Blue murmured their agreement, as baby-faced Heath Ledger began his bleacher serenade, and Henry was falling asleep, curled against them, in a motel where they would maybe not survive the night. Blue’s phone vibrated, and Henry looked at it, closest to the nightstand, and tore himself away from baby-faced Heath Ledger’s serenade, to see the shortened message summaries from Ronan: an emoji face deep in thought, three sleeping emojis, a string of emojis showing volume turning off, followed by seven messages that appeared to just be long blocks of poop emojis.

Attempting to parse the meaning of the texts, if there was any at all, Henry fell asleep tucked into Blue and Gansey beside him, their chance of making it to see the nation’s first sunrise dubious, but he left it to fate for the time being. It hadn’t done him all that badly so far.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to beyonce for the best album, thanks to kay for emoji suggestions at the end, no thanks to me for giving up on trying to paste emojis onto this doc, and to yuuhy and phoebe for too much
> 
> this all just kind of happened and is very self-indulgent, except i cut out the bits that were like absurdly so, so, and 95% of the murder-motel experience at the end is based on real life experiences


End file.
